’That we next proceed to consider the conduct of his Majesty, as holding the Executive powers of the laws of these states, and mark out his deviations from the line of duty.  By the constitution of Great Britain, as well as of the several American States, his Majesty possesses the power of refusing to pass into a law, any bill which has already passed the other two branches of the legislature.  His Majesty, however, and his ancestors, conscious of the impropriety of opposing their single opinion to the united wisdom of two Houses of Parliament, while their proceedings were unbiased by interested principles, for several ages past, have modestly declined the exercise of this power, in that part of his empire called Great Britain.  But, by change of circumstances, other principles than those of justice simply, have obtained an influence on their determinations.  The addition of new states to the British empire, has produced an addition of new, and sometimes, opposite interests.  It is now, therefore, the great office of his Majesty, to resume the exercise of his negative power, and to prevent the passage of laws by any one legislature of the empire, which might bear injuriously on the rights and interests of another.  Yet this will not excuse the wanton exercise of this power, which we have seen his Majesty practise on the laws of the American legislatures.  For the most trifling reasons, and sometimes for no conceivable reason at all, his Majesty has rejected laws of the most salutary tendency.  The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in those colonies, where it was, unhappily, introduced in their infant state.  But previous to the enfranchisement of the slaves we have, it is necessary to exclude all further importations from Africa.  Yet our repeated attempts to effect this, by prohibitions, and by imposing duties which might amount to a prohibition, have been hitherto defeated by his Majesty’s negative:  thus preferring the immediate advantages of a few British corsairs to the lasting interests of the American States, and to the rights of human nature, deeply wounded by this infamous practice.  Nay, the single interposition of an interested individual against a law, was scarcely ever known to fail of success, though in the opposite scale were placed the interests of a whole country.  That this is so shameful an abuse of a power, trusted with his Majesty for other purposes, as if, not reformed, would call for some legal restrictions.

’With equal inattention to the necessities of his people here, has his Majesty permitted our laws to lie neglected in England for years, neither confirming them by his assent, nor annulling them by his negative:  so that such of them as have no suspending clause, we hold on the most precarious of all tenures, his Majesty’s will; and such of them as suspend themselves till his Majesty’s assent be obtained, we have feared might be called into existence at some future and distant period, when time and change of